Close-Up and Personal Look at the NEW Lie-Nielsen Stainless Steel Honing Guide.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Can I play too?

http://www.leevalley.com/home/temprl/jaws.jpg

Finally an attachment for Veritas® Mk.II Honing Guide that allows side clamping.

"Now even more fiddly!"

Leading edge of pictured device has a 3" rail just like leading edge of current Mk.II guide. You could imagine it is a complete replacement for the top section of the guide (that attaches to roller), but these jaws would not be sufficient to keep blades from sliding in them.

It is also worth nothing that word "temprl" is part of the url. Does this refer to temporal - meaning "of this world", or relating to time. This may be the key to understanding how it works.

Correction - I believe rail in photo is 2.75". Don't know how long it is on Mk.II.

Correction 2 - it seems jaws are angled, possibly enough to securely hold both blades with beveled sides (by bottom surface and by item being stuck into the small curve at bottom of jaws), and blades with flat sides, by pinching them on the opposite end. If I guessed what this item is, I expect a free sample.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

We do have to do some web site updating, and will be rolling modest changes out starting in a month or two.

Please let users post comments on products. For example, I suggested to your customer support to list the longer 3/4" HCS brad bit that can go through a 4" top, instead of the short 3/4" HSS bit that can't, with the bushing product that is intended for drilling dog holes - especially since HSS bit has 1/2" shank and HCS bit has 3/8 shank, so will fit many more drills. They didn't say it wouldn't work, so it is a mystery why HSS. It may be scary to lose control over carefully presented marketing copy. Do it anyway.

[Ron Bontz]

I am sure it is a nice jig and I like the stainless. But I think I will stay with my LV for now.

[Greg Husband]

I was at the LN show in Nashville earlier this month where they were demonstrating the honing guide. They said the price point would be around $100 and $25 for additional jaws for the honing guide. However, they said it may be later this year before production starts.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Finally an attachment for Veritas® Mk.II Honing Guide that allows side clamping.

"Now even more fiddly!"

Leading edge of pictured device has a 3" rail just like leading edge of current Mk.II guide. You could imagine it is a complete replacement for the top section of the guide (that attaches to roller), but these jaws would not be sufficient to keep blades from sliding in them.

It is also worth nothing that word "temprl" is part of the url. Does this refer to temporal - meaning "of this world", or relating to time. This may be the key to understanding how it works.

Correction - I believe rail in photo is 2.75". Don't know how long it is on Mk.II.

Correction 2 - it seems jaws are angled, possibly enough to securely hold both blades with beveled sides (by bottom surface and by item being stuck into the small curve at bottom of jaws), and blades with flat sides, by pinching them on the opposite end. If I guessed what this item is, I expect a free sample.

Well, I was correct about what the item Rob was showing was: http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?p=51868

[Hilton Ralphs]

Lie-Nielsen had the opportunity to swing some Veritas narrow blade owners their way but it seems whilst they were sleeping, the thief was in the chicken coop.

05m0910v3.jpg

05m0910v2.jpg

Slam dunk!

[Marko Milisavljevic]

I had really hoped this would accommodate standard 2"+ plane blades. I dislike that I'm always expecting plane blades in the standard guide to slip/rotate and sometimes it moves by just a bit, so you don't realize for a number of strokes that you are honing at a skew. If you tighten the standard guide down hard, it will flex so that only ends are touching the blade, the middle bows out. It frustrates me that a company I admire so much designed this thing and continues to not improve on it (as far as wide blades go)

[ian maybury]

It's an interesting response to what is presumably (?) the tendency of the stock clamp/head to not very securely locate narrow tools - to prevent their skewing, and their leaning over to the side. Also to not be great at holding tools like Japanese chisels with backs that can slope up quite steeply from front to back of the blade. It's possible to get around these issues with high grip facings on the stock clamps/head - as previously posted - but this approach should work too and presumably has the advantage of not adding cost to the stock unit/being a bolt on upgrade for current owners.

Quite a lot hangs on the profile of the clamping lugs on the new head/clamp being correct. (so that the flat back face of the chisel is held tight against the reference surface of the clamp - which must in turn be in the same plane as the cylindrical roller) The instructions show it being used with the angle setting jig, and apparently using the side rail and stop on that to set the alignment. This might suggest that both the jaws and the jig need to be in correct alignment with each other.

Wonder does it handle short blades like e.g. spokeshave? I'm not sure that the angle setting jig can handle such a short blade/that it can be gripped forward enough in the clamp to deliver the correct angle - maybe it would need some sort of extension jaw like the LN to do so? Guessing it's probably intended for use use with the LV short/small blade holder they also do - which would also work with the stock head.

I wonder if they have managed to deliver a fix for the occasional minor misalignment between the plane of the cylindrical roller and the face of the clamp that the flat back of the chisel locates against that seems to pop up on occasion? This is a potential source of a misaligned micro bevel - although in truth it seems to be more of a tolerancing issue than anything requiring a redesign...

[Reinis Kanders]

Would this work with pigsticker type mortise chisel that has trapezoidal cross section? I have hard time getting narrower chisels of that type to be square when doing it by hand.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I will get a video up soon of the new honing guide in action. At first, I asked the same thing- "Why not make it accept 2 inch chisels?" It is a narrow blade guide, and a 2" chisel is so wide it works fine with the standard guide. As for the jaws, they do have some camber to them so they hold the tool with force against the guide, i.e. The slight camber to the jaws create some upward force as well as the side clamping force to keep the whole thing locked tight. It is quick and simple to register a chisel, and the screw action is very smooth. A very well-thought tool as always by Veritas.

[Karl Fife]

Would this work with pigsticker type mortise chisel that has trapezoidal cross section? I have hard time getting narrower chisels of that type to be square when doing it by hand.

This is an interesting question. The chisel references directly off the *face* in this side-clamp jig, which is great for angle consistency irrespective of blade thickness, but in this implementation it appears to accommodate blades up to a 15/32" thick. That would not be enough clearance for the the pig sticker chisels you mention. The LN can hold those tall pigsticker chisels, but only with the special mortise chisel jaws.

[Hilton Ralphs]

I wonder too if they have managed to deliver a fix for the occasional minor misalignment between the plane of the cylindrical roller and the face of the clamp that the flat back of the chisel locates against that seems to pop up on occasion? This is a potential source of a misaligned micro bevel

If you are referring to the new Veritas jig then consider this excerpt from the instructions.

The section between the primary bevel and the micro-bevel can often be skewed in relation to the edge; however, this is not a concern. While the geometry of the guide is sensitive to even the smallest influences, the geometry at the edge of the blade is not nearly as sensitive. The guide will create a square edge, even if the section between the primary bevel and the micro-bevel appears to be skewed.

05M0910i5.jpg

[Hilton Ralphs]

Would this work with pigsticker type mortise chisel that has trapezoidal cross section? I have hard time getting narrower chisels of that type to be square when doing it by hand.

From the literature;

It accepts blades from 1/8" to 1-1/2" wide, holding bevel-edged chisels up to 15/32" thick and square-edged blades up to 11/32" thick.

[ian maybury]

Chances are one will end up in my collection - there's always some scenario that another guide works best in. The price of going down the honing guide/perfect facets route i guess.

I guess Hilton the other half of the 'parallel micro bevel issue' (which for sure is mostly a cosmetic/aesthetic concern) is whether or not the primary bevel over which the micro bevel is ground/was straight in the first place. The Mk 2 guide set up references its alignment off the flat back of the chisel, whereas when e.g. hand sharpening the micro bevel ends up aligned off the primary bevel. The latter won't eliminate but will tend to hide any misalignment.

I'm a big fan of consistent alignment off the back since i've so far been honing my Japanese chisels single bevel after doing any light grinding needed (normally none) in the same honing guide (with no removal from the guide in between) off the top work surface on a Work Sharp. The fun starts with single bevel when you go to re-sharpen - which is why i said 'so far'. This set up is working fine after several. The honing guide has to return the chisel to pretty much precisely the same alignment as the last time around to enable quick re- sharpening on a fine waterstone with no more than minimal metal removal.

[Karl Fife]

An update on Lie Nielsen honing guide!!

Update 1 of 2:
"Should be available for purchase in just a few weeks"

I was lucky enough to go to Handworks 2015 in Amana, Iowa. While I was there, I talked with a number if different Lie Nielsen reps who all seemed to be saying the exact same thing, which is that the honing guide will be available for purchase in just a few weeks' time.

Update 2 of 2:
"Around $100, but we're not completely sure yet"

Of course I also asked about the cost.
I think the conversation went like this:
[OP] "So, how much will it cost?"
[LN] "Around $100, but we're not completely sure yet"
[OP] "I'm guessing that's because you have yet to determine final machine/tool time per copy, plus the defect rate etc., yes?"
[LN] "That's pretty much it on the nose."

I also looked at the new side-clamp attachment for the MKII LN guide. It's a fine piece of engineering.

Which one to own?! Great question. I've come to believe that there is no single honing guide for all tasks. No matter how versatile any particular guide, you may want to own a few guides for the exact same reason you own multiple hand planes--It's efficient to keep certain ones set up for certain tasks even if, in theory, one could everything. This is truly a first-world "problem" where we have decide between multiple excellent tools, all of which perform well enough to be inspiring. Now that that's settled, I'm about to post "Close-Up and Personal Look at the NEW Lie-Nielsen Plow Plane", with pictures :-)